Arthur Schopenhauer on the Nullity and Misery of Life

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was arguably the biggest, and indubitably the most programmatic, pessimist to put pen to paper, having elaborated whole complex philosophical system in a vast book called Die Welt as Wille und Vorstellung (The World as Will and Representation). While Schopenhauer’s metaphysics might look tendentious to a contemporary observer, he was also a writer of genius from whose penetrating psychological observation we can continue to benefit (if that is thhe right word!) today. I have prepared below a bilingual edition of Chapter 46 from Volume II of Die Welt as Wille und Vorstellung below. Schopenhauer’s original German text is in the left hand column, found at the German online library Zeno.org. The right-hand column is an English translation by R.B. Haldane and J. Kemp published in 1909 and available at Project Gutenberg.

Readers interested in Schopenhauer’s pessimism might also enjoy his famous essay “On the Suffering of the World,” available in a public-domain English translation as part of the Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer: Studies in Pessimism. This same essay is also available for download as a free audiobook at Librivox.org, which you can download onto your listening device of choice and enjoy while cooking dinner or exercising at the gym, or whatnot.

Note: Schopenhauer typically cited works casually and declined to make things easier for his readers by providing translations other than Latin translations of Greek originals. You may console yourselves with the thought that passages of untranslated Shakespeare and Byron might have been just as frustrating for many of Schopenhauer’s original German audience as some of the classical langugaes are below for me and many of you. I have on my long-term to-do list getting proper English translations inline for at least the Greek, but I haven’t gotten to these just yet.

Awakened to life out of the night of unconsciousness, the will finds
itself an individual, in an endless and boundless world, among innumerable
individuals, all striving, suffering, erring; and as if through a troubled
dream it hurries back to its old unconsciousness. Yet till then its
desires are limitless, its claims inexhaustible, and every satisfied
desire gives rise to a new one. No possible satisfaction in the world
could suffice to still its longings, set a goal to its infinite cravings,
and fill the bottomless abyss of its heart. Then let one consider what as
a rule are the satisfactions of any kind that a man obtains. For the most
part nothing more than the bare maintenance of this existence itself,
extorted day by day with unceasing trouble and constant care in the
conflict with want, and with death in prospect. Everything in life shows
that earthly happiness is destined to be frustrated or recognised as an
illusion. The grounds of this lie deep in the nature of things.
Accordingly the life of most men is troubled and short. Those who are
comparatively happy are so, for the most part, only apparently, or else,
like men of long life, they are the rare exceptions, a possibility of
which there had to be,—as decoy-birds. Life presents itself as a continual
deception in small things as in great. If it has promised, it does not
keep its word, unless to show how little worth desiring were the things
desired: thus we are deluded now by hope, now by what was hoped for. If it
has given, it did so in order to take. The enchantment of distance shows
us paradises which vanish like optical illusions when we have allowed
ourselves to be mocked by them. Happiness accordingly always lies in the
future, or else in the past, and the present may be compared to a small
dark cloud which the wind drives over the sunny plain: before and behind
it all is bright, only it itself always casts a shadow. The present is
therefore always insufficient; but the future is uncertain, and the past
irrevocable. Life with its hourly, daily, weekly, yearly, little, greater,
and great misfortunes, with its deluded hopes and its accidents destroying
all our calculations, bears so distinctly the impression of something with
which we must become disgusted, that it is hard to conceive how one has
been able to mistake this and allow oneself to be persuaded that life is
there in order to be thankfully enjoyed, and that man exists in order to
be happy. Rather that continual illusion and disillusion, and also the
nature of life throughout, presents itself to us as intended and
calculated to awaken the conviction that nothing at all is worth our
striving, our efforts and struggles, that all good things are vanity, the
world in all its ends bankrupt, and life a business which does not cover
its expenses;—so that our will may turn away from it.

The way in which this vanity of all objects of the will makes itself known
and comprehensible to the intellect which is rooted in the individual, is
primarily time. It is the form by means of which that vanity of things
appears as their perishableness; for on account of this all our pleasures
and joys disappear in our hands, and we afterwards ask astonished where
they have remained. That nothingness itself is therefore the only
objective element in time, i.e., that which corresponds to it in the
inner nature of things, thus that of which it is the expression. Just on
this account time is the a priori necessary form of all our perceptions;
in it everything must present itself, even we ourselves. Accordingly,
first of all, our life is like a payment which one receives in nothing but
copper pence, and yet must then give a discharge for: the copper pence are
the days; the discharge is death. For at last time makes known the
judgment of nature concerning the work of all the beings which appear in
it, in that it destroys them:—

Thus old age and death, to which every life necessarily hurries on, are
the sentence of condemnation on the will to live, coming from the hands of
nature itself, and which declares that this will is an effort which
frustrates itself. “What thou hast wished,” it says, “ends thus: desire
something better.” Hence the instruction which his life affords to every
one consists, as a whole, in this, that the objects of his desires
continually delude, waver, and fall, and accordingly bring more misery
than joy, till at last the whole foundation upon which they all stand
gives way, in that his life itself is destroyed and so he receives the
last proof that all his striving and wishing was a perversity, a false
path:—

Then old age and experience, hand in hand,
Lead him to death, and make him understand,
After a search so painful and so long,
That all his life he has been in the wrong72.

Then old age and experience, hand in hand,
Lead him to death, and make him understand,
After a search so painful and so long,
That all his life he has been in the wrong.

We shall, however, enter into the details of the matter, for it is in
these views that I have met with most contradiction. First of all, I have
to confirm by the following remarks the proof given in the text of the
negative nature of all satisfaction, thus of all pleasure and all
happiness, in opposition to the positive nature of pain.

We feel pain, but not painlessness; we feel care, but not the absence of
care; fear, but not security. We feel the wish as we feel hunger and
thirst; but as soon as it has been fulfilled, it is like the mouthful that
has been taken, which ceases to exist for our feeling the moment it is
swallowed. Pleasures and joys we miss painfully whenever they are wanting;
but pains, even when they cease after having long been present, are not
directly missed, but at the most are intentionally thought of by means of
reflection. For only pain and want can be felt positively, and therefore
announce themselves; well-being, on the other hand, is merely negative.
Therefore we do not become conscious of the three greatest blessings of
life, health, youth, and freedom, so long as we possess them, but only
after we have lost them; for they also are negations. We only observe that
days of our life were happy after they have given place to unhappy ones.
In proportion as pleasures increase, the susceptibility for them
decreases: what is customary is no longer felt as a pleasure. Just in this
way, however, is the susceptibility for suffering increased, for the loss
of what we are accustomed to is painfully felt. Thus the measure of what
is necessary increases through possession, and thereby the capacity for
feeling pain. The hours pass the quicker the more agreeably they are
spent, and the slower the more painfully they are spent; because pain, not
pleasure, is the positive, the presence of which makes itself felt. In the
same way we become conscious of time when we are bored, not when we are
diverted. Both these cases prove that our existence is most happy when we
perceive it least, from which it follows that it would be better not to
have it. Great and lively joy can only be conceived as the consequence of
great misery, which has preceded it; for nothing can be added to a state
of permanent satisfaction but some amusement, or the satisfaction of
vanity. Hence all poets are obliged to bring their heroes into anxious and
painful situations, so that they may be able to free them from them.
Dramas and Epics accordingly always describe only fighting, suffering,
tormented men; and every romance is a rareeshow in which we observe the
spasms and convulsions of the agonised human heart. Walter Scott has
naïvely expressed this æsthetic necessity in the conclusion to his novel,
“Old Mortality.” Voltaire, who was so highly favoured both by nature and
fortune, says, in entire agreement with the truth proved by me: “Le
bonheur n’est qu’un rève, et la douleur est réelle.” And he adds: “Il y
a quatre-vingts ans que je l’éprouve. Je n’y sais autre chose que me
résigner, et me dire que les mouches sont nées pour être mangées par les
araignées, et les hommes pour être dévorés par les chagrins.”

Before so confidently affirming that life is a blessing worth desiring or
giving thanks for, let one compare calmly the sum of the possible
pleasures which a man can enjoy in his life with the sum of the possible
sorrows which may come to him in his life. I believe the balance will not
be hard to strike. At bottom, however, it is quite superfluous to dispute
whether there is more good or evil in the world: for the mere existence of
evil decides the matter. For the evil can never be annulled, and
consequently can never be balanced by the good which may exist along with
it or after it.

For that a thousand had lived in happiness and pleasure would never do
away with the anguish and death-agony of a single one; and just as little
does my present well-being undo my past suffering. If, therefore, the
evils in the world were a hundred times less than is the case, yet their
mere existence would be sufficient to establish a truth which may be
expressed in different ways, though always somewhat indirectly, the truth
that we have not to rejoice but rather to mourn at the existence of the
world;—that its non-existence would be preferable to its existence;—that
it is something which at bottom ought not to be, &c., &c. Very beautiful
is Byron’s expression of this truth:—

Our life is a false nature, – ’tis not in
The harmony of things, this hard decree,
This uneradicable taint of sin,
This boundless Upas, this all-blasting tree
Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be
The skies, which rain their plagues on men like dew –
Disease, death, bondage – all the woes we see –
And worse, the woes we see not – which throb through
The immedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new.

Our life is a false nature,—’tis not in
The harmony of things, this hard decree,
This uneradicable taint of sin,
This boundless Upas, this all-blasting tree
Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be
The skies, which rain their plagues on men like dew—
Disease, death, bondage—all the woes we see—
And worse, the woes we see not—which throb through
The immedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new.

If the world and life were an end in themselves, and accordingly required
theoretically no justification and practically no indemnification or
compensation, but existed, for instance, as Spinoza and the Spinozists of
the present day represent it, as the single manifestation of a God, who,
animi causa, or else in order to mirror himself, undertook such an
evolution of himself; and hence its existence neither required to be
justified by reasons nor redeemed by results;—then the sufferings and
miseries of life would not indeed have to be fully equalled by the
pleasures and well-being in it; for this, as has been said, is impossible,
because my present pain is never abolished by future joys, for the latter
fill their time as the former fills its time: but there would have to be
absolutely no suffering, and death also would either have not to be, or
else to have no terrors for us. Only thus would life pay for itself.

But since now our state is rather something which had better not be,
everything about us bears the trace of this,—just as in hell everything
smells of sulphur—for everything is always imperfect and illusory,
everything agreeable is displaced by something disagreeable, every
enjoyment is only a half one, every pleasure introduces its own
disturbance, every relief new difficulties, every aid of our daily and
hourly need leaves us each moment in the lurch and denies its service, the
step upon which we place our foot so often gives way under us, nay,
misfortunes great and small are the element of our life; and, in a word,
we are like Phineus, whose food was all tainted and made uneatable by the
harpies.(42) Two remedies for this are tried: first, ευλαβεια, _i.e._,
prudence, foresight, cunning; it does not fully instruct us, is
insufficient, and leads to defeat. Secondly, the stoical equanimity which
seeks to arm us against all misfortunes by preparedness for everything and
contempt of all: practically it becomes cynical renunciation, which
prefers once for all to reject all means of relief and all alleviations—it
reduces us to the position of dogs, like Diogenes in his tub. The truth
is, we ought to be wretched, and we are so. The chief source of the
serious evils which affect men is man himself: homo homini lupus.
Whoever keeps this last fact clearly in view beholds the world as a hell,
which surpasses that of Dante in this respect, that one man must be the
devil of another. For this, one is certainly more fitted than another; an
arch-fiend, indeed, more fitted than all others, appearing in the form of
a conqueror, who places several hundred thousand men opposite each other,
and says to them: “To suffer and die is your destiny; now shoot each other
with guns and cannons,” and they do so.

In general, however, the conduct of men towards each other is
characterised as a rule by injustice, extreme unfairness, hardness, nay,
cruelty: an opposite course of conduct appears only as an exception. Upon
this depends the necessity of the State and legislation, and upon none of
your false pretences. But in all cases which do not lie within the reach
of the law, that regardlessness of his like, peculiar to man, shows itself
at once; a regardlessness which springs from his boundless egoism, and
sometimes also from wickedness. How man deals with man is shown, for
example, by negro slavery, the final end of which is sugar and coffee. But
we do not need to go so far: at the age of five years to enter a
cotton-spinning or other factory, and from that time forth to sit there
daily, first ten, then twelve, and ultimately fourteen hours, performing
the same mechanical labour, is to purchase dearly the satisfaction of
drawing breath. But this is the fate of millions, and that of millions
more is analogous to it.

We others, however, can be made perfectly miserable by trifling
misfortunes; perfectly happy, not by the world. Whatever one may say, the
happiest moment of the happy man is the moment of his falling asleep, and
the unhappiest moment of the unhappy that of his awaking. An indirect but
certain proof of the fact that men feel themselves unhappy, and
consequently are so, is also abundantly afforded by the fearful envy which
dwells in us all, and which in all relations of life, on the occasion of
any superiority, of whatever kind it may be, is excited, and cannot
contain its poison. Because they feel themselves unhappy, men cannot
endure the sight of one whom they imagine happy; he who for the moment
feels himself happy would like to make all around him happy also, and
says:

If life were in itself a blessing to be prized, and decidedly to be
preferred to non-existence, the exit from it would not need to be guarded
by such fearful sentinels as death and its terrors. But who would continue
in life as it is if death were less terrible? And again, who could even
endure the thought of death if life were a pleasure! But thus the former
has still always this good, that it is the end of life, and we console
ourselves with regard to the suffering of life with death, and with regard
to death with the suffering of life. The truth is, that the two
inseparably belong to each other, for together they constitute a deviation
from the right path, to return to which is as difficult as it is
desirable.

If the world were not something which, expressed practically, ought not
to be, it would also not be theoretically a problem; but its existence
would either require no explanation, inasmuch as it would be so entirely
self-evident that wonder concerning it or a question about it could arise
in no mind, or its end would present itself unmistakably. Instead of this,
however, it is indeed an insoluble problem; for even the most perfect
philosophy will yet always contain an unexplained element, like an
insoluble deposit or the remainder which the irrational relation of two
quantities always leaves over. Therefore if one ventures to raise the
question why there is not rather nothing than this world, the world cannot
be justified from itself, no ground, no final cause of its existence can
be found in itself, it cannot be shown that it exists for its own sake,
i.e., for its own advantage. In accordance with my teaching, this can
certainly be explained from the fact that the principle of its existence
is expressly one which is without ground, a blind will to live, which as
thing in itself cannot be made subject to the principle of sufficient
reason, which is merely the form of the phenomenon, and through which
alone every why is justified. But this also agrees with the nature of the
world, for only a blind will, no seeing will, could place itself in the
position in which we behold ourselves. A seeing will would rather have
soon made the calculation that the business did not cover the cost, for
such a mighty effort and struggle with the straining of all the powers,
under constant care, anxiety, and want, and with the inevitable
destruction of every individual life, finds no compensation in the
ephemeral existence itself, which is so obtained, and which passes into
nothing in our hands. Hence, then, the explanation of the world from the
Anaxagorean νους, i.e., from a will accompanied by knowledge,
necessarily demands optimism to excuse it, which accordingly is set up and
maintained in spite of the loudly crying evidence of a whole world full of
misery. Life is there given out to be a gift, while it is evident that
every one would have declined such a gift if he could have seen it and
tested it beforehand; just as Lessing admired the understanding of his
son, who, because he had absolutely declined to enter life, had to be
forcibly brought into it with the forceps, but was scarcely there when he
hurried away from it again. On the other hand, it is then well said that
life should be, from one end to the other, only a lesson; to which,
however, any one might reply: “For this very reason I wish I had been left
in the peace of the all-sufficient nothing, where I would have had no need
of lessons or of anything else.” If indeed it should now be added that he
must one day give an account of every hour of his life, he would be more
justified in himself demanding an account of why he had been transferred
from that rest into such a questionable, dark, anxious, and painful
situation. To this, then, we are led by false views. For human existence,
far from bearing the character of a gift, has entirely the character of
a debt that has been contracted. The calling in of this debt appears in
the form of the pressing wants, tormenting desires, and endless misery
established through this existence. As a rule, the whole lifetime is
devoted to the paying off of this debt; but this only meets the interest.
The payment of the capital takes place through death. And when was this
debt contracted? At the begetting.

Accordingly, if we regard man as a being whose existence is a punishment
and an expiation, we then view him in a right light. The myth of the fall
(although probably, like the whole of Judaism, borrowed from the
Zend-Avesta: Bundahish, 15), is the only point in the Old Testament to
which I can ascribe metaphysical, although only allegorical, truth; indeed
it is this alone that reconciles me to the Old Testament. Our existence
resembles nothing so much as the consequence of a false step and a guilty
desire. New Testament Christianity, the ethical spirit of which is that of
Brahmanism and Buddhism, and is therefore very foreign to the otherwise
optimistic spirit of the Old Testament, has also, very wisely, linked
itself on precisely to that myth: indeed, without this it would have found
no point of connection with Judaism at all. If any one desires to measure
the degree of guilt with which our existence is tainted, then let him look
at the suffering that is connected with it. Every great pain, whether
bodily or mental, declares what we deserve: for it could not come to us if
we did not deserve it. That Christianity also regards our existence in
this light is shown by a passage in Luther’s Commentary on Galatians,
chap. 3, which I only have beside me in Latin: “Sumus autem nos omnes
corporibus et rebus subjecti Diabolo, et hospites sumus in mundo, cujus
ipse princeps et Deus est. Ideo panis, quem edimus, potus, quem bibimus,
vestes, quibus utimur, imo aër et totum quo vivimus in carne, sub ipsius
imperio est.” An outcry has been made about the melancholy and
disconsolate nature of my philosophy; yet it lies merely in the fact that
instead of inventing a future hell as the equivalent of sin, I show that
where guilt lies in the world there is also already something akin to
hell; but whoever is inclined to deny this can easily experience it.

And to this world, to this scene of tormented and agonised beings, who
only continue to exist by devouring each other, in which, therefore, every
ravenous beast is the living grave of thousands of others, and its
self-maintenance is a chain of painful deaths; and in which the capacity
for feeling pain increases with knowledge, and therefore reaches its
highest degree in man, a degree which is the higher the more intelligent
the man is; to this world it has been sought to apply the system of
optimism, and demonstrate to us that it is the best of all possible
worlds. The absurdity is glaring. But an optimist bids me open my eyes and
look at the world, how beautiful it is in the sunshine, with its mountains
and valleys, streams, plants, animals, &c. &c. Is the world, then, a
rareeshow? These things are certainly beautiful to look at, but to be
them is something quite different. Then comes a teleologist, and praises
to me the wise arrangement by virtue of which it is taken care that the
planets do not run their heads together, that land and sea do not get
mixed into a pulp, but are held so beautifully apart, also that everything
is neither rigid with continual frost nor roasted with heat; in the same
way, that in consequence of the obliquity of the ecliptic there is no
eternal spring, in which nothing could attain to ripeness, &c. &c. But
this and all like it are mere conditiones sine quibus non. If in general
there is to be a world at all, if its planets are to exist at least as
long as the light of a distant fixed star requires to reach them, and are
not, like Lessing’s son, to depart again immediately after birth, then
certainly it must not be so clumsily constructed that its very framework
threatens to fall to pieces. But if one goes on to the results of this
applauded work, considers the players who act upon the stage which is so
durably constructed, and now sees how with sensibility pain appears, and
increases in proportion as the sensibility develops to intelligence, and
then how, keeping pace with this, desire and suffering come out ever more
strongly, and increase till at last human life affords no other material
than this for tragedies and comedies, then whoever is honest will scarcely
be disposed to set up hallelujahs. David Hume, in his “Natural History of
Religion,” §§ 6, 7, 8, and 13, has also exposed, mercilessly but with
convincing truth, the real though concealed source of these last. He also
explains clearly in the tenth and eleventh books of his “Dialogues on
Natural Religion,” with very pertinent arguments, which are yet of quite a
different kind from mine, the miserable nature of this world and the
untenableness of all optimism; in doing which he attacks this in its
origin. Both works of Hume’s are as well worth reading as they are unknown
at the present day in Germany, where, on the other hand, incredible
pleasure is found, patriotically, in the most disgusting nonsense of
home-bred boastful mediocrities, who are proclaimed great men. Hamann,
however, translated these dialogues; Kant went through the translation,
and late in life wished to induce Hamann’s son to publish them because the
translation of Platner did not satisfy him (see Kant’s biography by F. W.
Schubert, pp. 81 and 165). From every page of David Hume there is more to
be learned than from the collected philosophical works of Hegel, Herbart,
and Schleiermacher together.

The founder of systematic optimism, again, is Leibnitz whose philosophical
merit I have no intention of denying although I have never succeeded in
thinking myself into the monadology, pre-established harmony, and
identitas indiscernibilium. His Nouveaux essays sur l’entendement
are, however, merely an excerpt, with a full yet weak criticism, with a
view to correction, of Locke’s work which is justly of world-wide
reputation. He here opposes Locke with just as little success as he
opposes Newton in the Tentamen de motuum cœlestium causis, directed
against the system of gravitation. The “Critique of Pure Reason” is
specially directed against this Leibnitz-Wolfian philosophy, and has a
polemical, nay, a destructive relation to it, just as it is related to
Locke and Hume as a continuation and further construction. That at the
present day the professors of philosophy are on all sides engaged in
setting Leibnitz, with his juggling, upon his legs again, nay, in
glorifying him, and, on the other hand, in depreciating and setting aside
Kant as much as possible, has its sufficient reason in the primum
vivere; the “Critique of Pure Reason” does not admit of one giving out
Judaistic mythology as philosophy, nor of one speaking, without ceremony,
of the “soul” as a given reality, a well-known and well-accredited person,
without giving account of how one arrived at this conception, and what
justification one has for using it scientifically. But primum vivere,
deinde philosophari! Down with Kant, vivat our Leibnitz! To return,
then, to Leibnitz, I cannot ascribe to the Théodicée, as a methodical and
broad unfolding of optimism, any other merit than this, that it gave
occasion later for the immortal Candide of the great Voltaire; whereby
certainly Leibnitz’s often-repeated and lame excuse for the evil of the
world, that the bad sometimes brings about the good, received a
confirmation which was unexpected by him. Even by the name of his hero
Voltaire indicates that it only requires sincerity to recognise the
opposite of optimism. Really upon this scene of sin, suffering, and death
optimism makes such an extraordinary figure that one would be forced to
regard it as irony if one had not a sufficient explanation of its origin
in the secret source of it (insincere flattery, with insulting confidence
in its success), which, as was mentioned above, is so delightfully
disclosed by Hume.

But indeed to the palpably sophistical proofs of Leibnitz that this is the
best of all possible worlds, we may seriously and honestly oppose the
proof that it is the worst of all possible worlds. For possible means, not
what one may construct in imagination, but what can actually exist and
continue. Now this world is so arranged as to be able to maintain itself
with great difficulty; but if it were a little worse, it could no longer
maintain itself. Consequently a worse world, since it could not continue
to exist, is absolutely impossible: thus this world itself is the worst of
all possible worlds. For not only if the planets were to run their heads
together, but even if any one of the actually appearing perturbations of
their course, instead of being gradually balanced by others, continued to
increase, the world would soon reach its end. Astronomers know upon what
accidental circumstances—principally the irrational relation to each other
of the periods of revolution—this depends, and have carefully calculated
that it will always go on well; consequently the world also can continue
and go on. We will hope that, although Newton was of an opposite opinion,
they have not miscalculated, and consequently that the mechanical
perpetual motion realised in such a planetary system will not also, like
the rest, ultimately come to a standstill. Again, under the firm crust of
the planet dwell the powerful forces of nature which, as soon as some
accident affords them free play, must necessarily destroy that crust, with
everything living upon it, as has already taken place at least three times
upon our planet, and will probably take place oftener still. The
earthquake of Lisbon, the earthquake of Haiti, the destruction of Pompeii,
are only small, playful hints of what is possible. A small alteration of
the atmosphere, which cannot even be chemically proved, causes cholera,
yellow fever, black death, &c., which carry off millions of men; a
somewhat greater alteration would extinguish all life. A very moderate
increase of heat would dry up all the rivers and springs. The brutes have
received just barely so much in the way of organs and powers as enables
them to procure with the greatest exertion sustenance for their own lives
and food for their offspring; therefore if a brute loses a limb, or even
the full use of one, it must generally perish. Even of the human race,
powerful as are the weapons it possesses in understanding and reason,
nine-tenths live in constant conflict with want, always balancing
themselves with difficulty and effort upon the brink of destruction. Thus
throughout, as for the continuance of the whole, so also for that of each
individual being the conditions are barely and scantily given, but nothing
over. The individual life is a ceaseless battle for existence itself;
while at every step destruction threatens it. Just because this threat is
so often fulfilled provision had to be made, by means of the enormous
excess of the germs, that the destruction of the individuals should not
involve that of the species, for which alone nature really cares. The
world is therefore as bad as it possibly can be if it is to continue to be
at all. Q. E. D. The fossils of the entirely different kinds of animal
species which formerly inhabited the planet afford us, as a proof of our
calculation, the records of worlds the continuance of which was no longer
possible, and which consequently were somewhat worse than the worst of
possible worlds.

Optimism is at bottom the unmerited self-praise of the real originator of
the world, the will to live, which views itself complacently in its works;
and accordingly it is not only a false, but also a pernicious doctrine.
For it presents life to us as a desirable condition, and the happiness of
man as the end of it. Starting from this, every one then believes that he
has the most just claim to happiness and pleasure; and if, as is wont to
happen, these do not fall to his lot, then he believes that he is wronged,
nay, that he loses the end of his existence; while it is far more correct
to regard work, privation, misery, and suffering, crowned by death, as the
end of our life (as Brahmanism and Buddhism, and also genuine Christianity
do); for it is these which lead to the denial of the will to live. In the
New Testament the world is represented as a valley of tears, life as a
process of purifying or refining, and the symbol of Christianity is an
instrument of torture. Therefore, when Leibnitz, Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke,
and Pope brought forward optimism, the general offence which it gave
depended principally upon the fact that optimism is irreconcilable with
Christianity; as Voltaire states and explains in the preface to his
excellent poem, Le désastre de Lisbonne, which is also expressly
directed against optimism. This great man, whom I so gladly praise, in
opposition to the abuse of venal German ink-slingers, is placed decidedly
higher than Rousseau by the insight to which he attained in three
respects, and which prove the greater depth of his thinking: (1) the
recognition of the preponderating magnitude of the evil and misery of
existence with which he is deeply penetrated; (2) that of the strict
necessity of the acts of will; (3) that of the truth of Locke’s principle,
that what thinks may also be material: while Rousseau opposes all this
with declamations in his Profession de foi du vicaire Savoyard, a
superficial Protestant pastor’s philosophy; as he also in the same spirit
attacks the beautiful poem of Voltaire which has just been referred to
with ill-founded, shallow, and logically false reasoning, in the interests
of optimism, in his long letter to Voltaire of 18th August 1756, which is
devoted simply to this purpose. Indeed, the fundamental characteristic and
the πρωτον ψευδος of Rousseau’s whole philosophy is this, that in the
place of the Christian doctrine of original sin, and the original
depravity of the human race, he puts an original goodness and unlimited
perfectibility of it, which has only been led astray by civilisation and
its consequences, and then founds upon this his optimism and humanism.

As in Candide Voltaire wages war in his facetious manner against
optimism, Byron has also done so in his serious and tragic style, in his
immortal masterpiece, Cain, on account of which he also has been
honoured with the invectives of the obscurantist, Friedrich Schlegel. If
now, in conclusion, to confirm my view, I were to give what has been said
by great men of all ages in this anti-optimistic spirit, there would be no
end to the quotations, for almost every one of them has expressed in
strong language his knowledge of the misery of this world. Thus, not to
confirm, but merely to embellish this chapter, a few quotations of this
kind may be given at the end of it.

First of all, let me mention here that the Greeks, far as they were from
the Christian and lofty Asiatic conception of the world, and although they
decidedly stood at the point of view of the assertion of the will, were
yet deeply affected by the wretchedness of existence. This is shown even
by the invention of tragedy, which belongs to them. Another proof of it is
afforded us by the custom of the Thracians, which is first mentioned by
Herodotus, though often referred to afterwards—the custom of welcoming the
new-born child with lamentations, and recounting all the evils which now
lie before it; and, on the other hand, burying the dead with mirth and
jesting, because they are no longer exposed to so many and great
sufferings. In a beautiful poem preserved for us by Plutarch (De audiend.
poët. in fine) this runs thus:—

It is not to be attributed to historical relationship, but to the moral
identity of the matter, that the Mexicans welcomed the new-born child with
the words, “My child, thou art born to endure; therefore endure, suffer,
and keep silence.” And, following the same feeling, Swift (as Walter Scott
relates in his Life of Swift) early adopted the custom of keeping his
birthday not as a time of joy but of sadness, and of reading on that day
the passage of the Bible in which Job laments and curses the day on which
it was said in the house of his father a man-child is born.

Well known and too long for quotation is the passage in the “Apology of
Socrates,” in which Plato makes this wisest of mortals say that death,
even if it deprives us of consciousness for ever, would be a wonderful
gain, for a deep, dreamless sleep every day is to be preferred even to the
happiest life.

O heaven! that one might read the book of fate,
And see the revolution of the times,
– – – – – how chances mock,
And changes fill the cup of alteration
With divers liquors! O, if this were seen,
The happiest youth, – viewing his progress through,
What perils past, what crosses to ensue, –
Would shut the book, and sit him down and die.

Shakspeare puts the words in the mouth of the old king Henry IV.:—

“O heaven! that one might read the book of fate,
And see the revolution of the times,
… how chances mock,
And changes fill the cup of alteration
With divers liquors! O, if this were seen,
The happiest youth,—viewing his progress through,
What perils past, what crosses to ensue,—
Would shut the book, and sit him down and die.”

Baltazar Gracian also brings the misery of our existence before our eyes
in the darkest colours in the “Criticon,” Parte i., Crisi 5, just at the
beginning, and Crisi 7 at the end, where he explicitly represents life as
a tragic farce.

Yet no one has so thoroughly and exhaustively handled this subject as, in
our own day, Leopardi. He is entirely filled and penetrated by it: his
theme is everywhere the mockery and wretchedness of this existence; he
presents it upon every page of his works, yet in such a multiplicity of
forms and applications, with such wealth of imagery that he never wearies
us, but, on the contrary, is throughout entertaining and exciting.

Contact me

There is a contact form, a PGP public key, and a variety of other current ways to get in touch with me at this page.

About me and the sites

This site is the oldest of my various blogs. It is the home of the webcomics I write, the artwork I commission, images I curate, and miscellaneous writings. The generally material lies at the intersection of stuff I find erotic and the topos of mad science. The content is definitely for adults only and is sometimes squicky. I make no apologies for these facts. If you don't like what's here, there are plenty of other places for you on the web to be.

I have a number of other blogs, including Hedonix, where I curate images of a general kind that, some adult and some not but all of which give me pleasure, and Infernal Wonders, where I curate images thematically similar to some found on this site, but tonally a lot squickier. At a blog called Pyrosophy I write philosophy and cultivate my pessimistic and nihilistic nature. You can follow me on twitter at @EroticMadSci.

I reblog images here that other people have shared on the web, and try very hard to make sure that images are correctly sourced back to their creators. In doing so, I have a working understanding that people post these things because they want them brought to the attention of the wider world. I am bringing them to such attention. Nonetheless, if you are the rightful owner of an image posted here and want it removed, feel free to get in touch with me at "Contact me" above and I will remove it.